Narrow Results

This paper describes an extension into three dimensions of an existing two-dimensional technique for simulating brittle solid fracture. The fracture occurs on a simulated solid created by "gluing" together space-filling polyhedral elements with compliant interelement joints. Such a material can be shown to have well-defined elastic properties. However, the "glue" can only support a specified tensile stress and breaks when that stress is exceeded. In this manner, a crack can propagate across the simulated material. A comparison with experiment shows that the simulation can accurately reproduce the size distributions for all fragments with linear dimensions greater than three element sizes.

In this work we present some moment preserving finite volume schemes (FVS) for solving population balance equations. We are considering unified numerical methods to simultaneous aggregation, breakage, growth and source terms, e.g. for nucleation. The criteria for the preservation of different moments are given. The property of conservation is a special case of preservation. First we present a FVS which shows the preservation with respect to one-moment depending upon the processes under consideration. In case of the aggregation and breakage it satisfies first-moment preservation whereas for the growth and nucleation we observe zeroth-moment preservation. This is due to the well-known property of conservativity of FVS. However, coupling of all the processes shows no preservation for any moments. To overcome this issue, we reformulate the cell average technique into a conservative formulation which is coupled together with a modified upwind scheme to give moment preservation with respect to the first two-moments for all four processes under consideration. This allows for easy coupling of these processes. The preservation is proven mathematically and verified numerically. The numerical results for the first two-moments are verified for various coupled processes where analytical solutions are available.

Particle size distribution and number of ice crystals have a great influence on the flow and heat transfer performance of ice slurry. A population balance model (PBM) containing population and mass balances has been built to simulate numerically the development of ice particle size distribution during adiabatic ice slurry storage. The model assumes a homogeneously mixed and long-term storage tank in which the effect of breakage and aggregation between ice crystals was considered. For solving the population balance equations (PBEs) in the PBM, a semi-discrete finite volume scheme was applied. Finally, the effect of breakage and aggregation on development of ice particle size distribution was analyzed respectively. The results show that both breakage and aggregation are the two important effects on the particle size distribution and evolution of ice particle during storage, but they have opposite effect on the development of ice crystal size. In storage, breakage and aggregation have almost equivalent effect in the initial phase, but aggregation has dominant effect at last. The PBM results are in good agreement with experimental results by Pronk et al. [Effect of long-term ice slurry storage on crystal size distribution, 5th Workshop on Ice Slurries of the IIR (2002), pp. 151–160]. Therefore, the PBM presented in this paper is able to predict the development of particle size distribution during ice slurry storage.

Wet granulation is traditionally considered an empirical art. The chemical and allied industry faces range of problems, including large recycle ratios, poor quality control, surging and even the total failure of scale up from laboratory to full scale production. However, in recent years there has been a rapid advancement in understanding of the fundamental processes that control granulation behavior and product properties. This paper presents the current understanding of the key area of wet granulation process: nucleation.